sarah in nyc

At long last, the tallit is complete. I had made a beautiful atara (neckband), only to realize that it was just too wide for the narrow tallit. My husband wisely suggested that I use it as the decorative element on the bag. My dear friend Welmoed had given me a length of red silk curtain from her drapery workshop a few years ago. It was the perfect color for the bag. The lovely work Welmoed had done to line and interline the curtain provided exactly the right amount of structure for the bag. I lined the bag with red linen and calligraphed the bat-mitzvah girl's name  in Hebrew and English- here scribbled out for her privacy. Below you see the tallit inside the bag. I made a new atara. Below you see the mitered corners of the embroidered ribbon. Mitering used to be a task I did really badly. I love how the machine embroidery evokes the look of of old hand embroidery from any number of cultures. You can see what the ribbon looked like before I embro...

Last Friday we drove to the wedding.  We spent Shabbat with dear, dear friends. My older sister hosted a Friday night dinner for some of us out-of- towners. We attended the auf-ruf on Shabbat morning and had the pleasure of hearing my nephew read Torah and the Haftarah. As we walked back and forth through Newton each street name was full of memories. I never lived in Newton but many of my classmates did. Grant Street, Hobart Road, Langley Road, Cotton Street, Park Lane Street, Ballard Street, each street name evoked a person, a relationship, parties invited to, parties not invited to..... Sunday morning friends and family gathered for the wedding. Friends, readers of this blog as well as my sewing buddies have asked me to show photos of me in my dress.  My cousin Eunice who often serves as the family documentarian took these photos of me at the beginning of the festivities. We (that means my husband at the wheel) drove home after the wedding and than...

Creating a piece for a client is always about balancing  various sets of needs. Often my client is a twelve year old kid with their own strong opinions. Sometimes the parents have strong opinions. Clearly,  (and anyone who knows me for more than five minutes can tell you) I am a person with opinions on things, particularly Jewish ritual objects. This has been especially true in the making of Alice's tallit. A big part of my job has been taking what she has felt strongly about and making it work in the context of a tallit. Alice loves orange and red. neither would be my first, or even tenth choice on a tallit. Never the less, it is important that she be heard. There are lots of tallit makers that combine lovely ready made ribbon to make a tallit. I use a mix of embroidery stitches and utility stitches ( the sorts of stitches you might use to mend torn trousers or to install elastic into a pair of underpants) to embellish the ribbon and the stripes into a composition...

I had planned to post on Friday about the meal I had made for a cousin visiting from Florida. But Shabbat started early and my computer was being cranky about transferring images.  The time for candle lighting was getting close so I just  stopped. I was planning to post about the making of this kale, ricotta cheese and goat cheese lasagna made with home made noodles. Yes, it was tasty. I had also finished this challah cover that was a wedding gift for beloved cousins. The groom's parents were so incredibly present and caring during my parents' declines. They behaved not like a niece and nephew in law but like another set of siblings. The groom is one of the kindest people on the planet. I don't know his wife as well, but she made sure that all of the food served at their wedding buffet was served with a menu that listed possible allergens because she had sat next to me at a  family wedding a few weeks earlier and  saw me have to interrogate the catere...